When we see or experience new things, our existing belief and knowledge will color our judgment and interpretation about it. This is how our cognition works.This top down processing happens automatically and spontaneously, whether we want it or not. To overcome this, we need external help to review our perspective and change it into a more healthier view of the world.

Biased Interpretation

When we perceive something, we interpret it based on what we already know.We believe that everybody else, including people who don’t posses what we know, would see the situation similarly that we do.This is a common cause of communication problem.We need to put ourselves in everybody else’s shoes and take their perspective to be better at communication. We also need to ask questions more.

Curse of Knowledge

We have a tendency to confirm what we already believe.Because of this, we only focus on finding confirming evidences, even though seeking evidences that will say otherwise is equally important.This is dangerous for us, especially if what we believe is not a factual truth.If we’re looking for truth, we must look for disconfirming evidence even though it makes us uncomfortable.

Confirmation Bias

Things that our mind can process easily will make us overconfident.When we see someone does hard thing effortlessly, we often think we can do it too.When we see a final product that looks perfectly normal, we think the process leading to that is also easy and smooth.When we see a great book that is easy to read, we think it’s also easy to write it, while the opposite is true.

The Fluency Effect

“Confirming data is necessary but not sufficient, because you also need to disconfirm your hypothesis.”

“The more observations we make, the more accurately we can generalize the pattern to cases we have not yet observed or make predictions about the future.”

“The perceived fluency of an impending task makes us underestimate the difficulty of executing”

There are multiple cues that people use to infer causality of an event:<ul><li>Similarity</li><li>Sufficiency</li><li>Necessity</li><li>Abnormality</li><li>Recency</li><li>Controllability</li></ul>

Causal Attribution

An ability to delay short term rewards to prioritize long term outcomes is a positive trait and it highly correlates with success in the long run.However, it’s also important for us to enjoy the process, not just the final goal. This will increase our probability to avoid physical and mental health issues at our young age.

Problem of Delayed Gratification

People weigh negative information more than positive information. According to revolutionary work by Kahneman and Tvetsky, we treat the same monetary values differently, depending on whether they are gains or losses. This is called loss aversion.We have this bias because our ancestors were living on the line, small error can cost them their life. So it’s better to play safe.

Negativity Bias

We often underestimate time and effort required to complete a task. That’s why we miss deadlines, exceed our budget, or run out of energy before we finish.To overcome this, we need to come up with specific and detailed plan. We need to divide the task into smaller ones that we can estimate more accurately.

Planning Fallacy

We often feel anecdotes from people we know more persuasive than scientific evidence. This is because we don’t understand statistics well.3 key concepts we must always remember:<ol><li>Law of Large Number (more data in a sample, more accurate conclusion)</li><li>Regression Toward the Mean (extreme result will be followed by moderate ones)</li><li>Bayes’ Theorem (just because probability of A given that B occurs is high, it doesn’t mean that probability of B given A occurs is also high)</li></ol>

Key Concepts in Statistics

“Our preferences and choices are based on how the options are framed rather than the options per se.”

“Sometimes, it’s easier and better to focus on solving the problems caused by different perspectives than trying to change those perspectives themselves.”

“The decisions we make for ourselves should be as impartial as possible and based on statistical principles and probability theories, because they provide the most accurate predictions”

“One of the most important functions of causal reasoning is to control future events. We want to avoid mishaps and repeat good outcomes by identifying the reasons each happened.”

“Often our communication failures occur simply because we neglect to consider the other person’s perspective.”

We are frequently overconfident about the extent of our knowledge—we think we know more than we really do.

This book is based on a popular course in Yale University and is written by the professor.

“An INVALUABLE RESOURCE to anyone who wants to think better.” —Gretchen Rubin Award-winning YALE PROFESSOR Woo-kyoung Ahn delivers “A MUST-READ—a smart and compellingly readable guide to cutting-edge research into how people think.” (Paul Bloom) “A FUN exploration.” —Dax Shepard Psychologist Woo-kyoung Ahn devised a course at Yale called “Thinking” to help students examine the biases that cause so many problems in their daily lives. It quickly became one of the university’s most popular courses. Now, for the first time, Ahn presents key insights from her years of teaching and research in a book for everyone. She shows how “thinking problems” stand behind a wide range of challenges, from common, self-inflicted daily aggravations to our most pressing societal issues and inequities. Throughout, Ahn draws on decades of research from other cognitive psychologists, as well as from her own groundbreaking studies. And she presents it all in a compellingly readable style that uses fun examples from pop culture, anecdotes from her own life, and illuminating stories from history and the headlines. Thinking 101 is a book that goes far beyond other books on thinking, showing how we can improve not just our own daily lives through better awareness of our biases but also the lives of everyone around us. It is, quite simply, required reading for everyone who wants to think—and live—better.

WOO-KYOUNG AHN

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